strategies and movements through the end of the century, though many major changes in CO have occurred since 1980.21 The Roots of Modern CO. A discussion of CO’s history and current practice must feature Saul Alinsky, the founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). His work from 1938 until his death in 1972 is unique and had a powerful, multi-dimensional influence on the CO field. It was Alinsky who drew the roots of CO together in the late 1930s — roots first planted in the American Revolution and later sprouting in the populist movement of the 1890s, the political radicalism of the 1920s and 1930s that focused on organizing tenant unions, unemployed councils and other organizations to protest the horrible conditions of the period, and industrial union organizing of the 1930s.24 The Alinsky-inspired approach to CO catalyzed the creation of many organizations while he was still alive. He learned from his experiences in city after city, and spearheaded efforts to modify organizing methods and strategies for maximum effectiveness. Many current CO groups that trace their own history to Alinsky combine the best of Alinsky with fundamental modifications they have made to forge the approaches they now employ. Many books, reports, critiques and films about Alinsky and his efforts are available. Alinsky himself wrote two books, Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals, that are immensely popular and in constant use as tools in training for community organizers and leaders and in some college-level courses, primarily in schools of social work. A selected bibliography of resource materials by and about Alinsky, and information on obtaining a recent documentary film about Alinsky and the work of IAF,25 is on NFG’s Web site, at www.nfg.org.
Labor Organizing in the 1930s: Seeds for CO’s Future
In the 1920s and 1930s, labor militants created unemployed councils to raise immediate demands for public relief as part of their effort to build a working class movement. They used a range of supplementary action tactics, including local and national demonstrations, hunger marches on employers and government officials, petition drives, street corner speakers, etc. In addition, to strengthen their movement efforts among the unemployed, they supported community-based tenant associations to fight evictions, farmers’ unions to fight foreclosures, veterans’ committees to demand bonus payments, cultural associations among immigrants and artists, share-croppers’ unions among Southern Blacks, and underground in-plant organizing committees.22 …The eventual course of this work contributed heavily to the enactment of the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, and other landmark New Deal programs, and to the establishment of industrial unionism in mass production. It also set off a wave of organizing across the working class.23
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BACKGROUNDER # 1
Tracing the Influence of Saul Alinsky on Modern CO
Most contemporary community organizing finds its beginnings in the work of the late Saul Alinsky. He organized the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) in Chicago in the late 1930s. Allied with the United Packinghouse Workers Union, BYNC was instrumental in helping tens of thousands of packinghouse workers to dramatically improve their standard of living and gain the dignity that comes with union recognition and collective bargaining. BYNC brought together under one organizational umbrella not only the union but most of the Roman Catholic parishes in the BYNC neighborhood and a myriad of other voluntary associations. The organization quickly developed sufficient power to be able to deal effectively with the Chicago ‘machine’ and win victories on numerous issues, including child welfare, public school improvement and neighborhood stabilization. For Alinsky, the BYNC experience also led to recognition by the powerful Archdiocese of Chicago, John L. Lewis of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and wealthy department store owner Marshall Field. Backing from them helped Alinsky to form the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which was Alinsky’s base of operations for the remainder of his life. After World War II, Alinsky brought Fred Ross, Sr. onto his staff. Ross’s work in California led to the formation of the Community Service Organization (CSO), largely Mexican American, and the identification and training as an organizer of Cesar Chavez, then a community leader. Unlike BYNC, which was an ‘organization of organizations,’ CSO took a ‘direct membership’ form, a precursor to the ACORN model initiated by Wade Rathke. Chavez, of course, founded the National Farmworkers Association and later was the principal leader of the United Farmworkers Union. Chavez involved Ross in his organizing, calling him ‘my secret weapon.’ It was Ross who trained many farmworkers and students — and trainers who could extend the training to others — for work on boycotts across the country. In the labor movement today, almost every union that is actively involved in organizing has staff who went through the farmworkers union experience. The same holds for numerous community organizing groups. By the late 1950s, Alinsky broadened his base of institutional support from the Chicago Archdiocese to Catholic dioceses all over the country, and to many mainline Protestant denominations. The impact Alinsky’s (and IAF’s) work had on how a fair number of American churches increasingly supported urban
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BACKGROUNDER # 1 (continued)
reform efforts and fought racism and poverty beginning in that period is still in evidence in such grantmaking agencies as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. In 1959, the impact of the emerging civil rights movement in the South was beginning to be felt in northern ghettoes. With support from both Catholic and Protestant funding sources, Alinsky began work in the largely African American Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago. The next year the student-led sit-ins began in the South. As the civil rights movement spread and gained momentum, it generated considerable interest in economic and racial justice issues in colleges, and in religious seminaries and denominations across the country, and created new sources of organizers and funding for community organizing. Alinsky capitalized on this to spread his brand of organizing to still more communities. Paralleling this development, urban unrest grew; poverty and racism became increasingly unacceptable in northern communities of color, Black and Hispanic, and this too obviously spurred community organizing’s growth.26
— Mike Miller, Organize Training Center
CO Today. Since the mid-seventies, and particularly in the 1990s, CO strategy has prioritized the development of powerful, multi-issue organizational vehicles with the track records, intent and potential to become significant long-term players for change. And this is exactly what has happened. The CO field is studded with powerful organizations achieving important results, and more such groups — nurtured by national organizing networks — are emerging. These groups, and CO practitioners as a whole, have demonstrated increased sophistication in attracting allies, developing community cohesion, and marshalling power not only locally, but on regional, state and national levels. The Toolbox focuses primarily on this modern period.
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LEADERSHIP AND PARTICIPATION: HOW CO GROUPS WORK
It was women going door-to-door, speaking with their neighbors, meeting in voter-registration classes together, organizing through their churches that gave the vital momentum and energy to the movement, that made it a mass movement.27
— Andrew Young
CO places its faith in the value of people working together for common ends, and in what they can do if given appropriate guidance and opportunity. In CO, the people lead. Without them there is nothing that can properly be called CO. Organizers call the work they do to involve people “base-building.” It is continuous and challenging, whether done through religious institutions, as in the faith-based approach to CO, or directly with individuals and families in direct membership CO groups. Base building is recruiting and engaging new people, keeping current members motivated and involved, and deepening member participation. Foundation Support for Base-Building. Base-building is not a “project” that can easily fit into narrowly defined grantmaking categories. Its effectiveness is hard to measure but critical. A strong and successful CO organization’s base must have qualities like heart, hope, persistence, resilience and energy. It must be truly representative of and accountable to the community, continuously making room for new people and adapting to new circumstances. Funders often invest in CO because they believe in the way CO reaches out to and involves people who have not been well served by societal institutions, who aren’t voting or don’t believe that their voices count. The funders want to see hard results — changes in policies, new jobs in the community, reductions in health hazards and more. But they know that the work of change that is responsive to and “owned” by the community takes longterm base-building efforts. The Importance of Developing Community Leaders. Any business, governmental unit, nonprofit organization, or foundation rises or falls with the quality of its leadership. For CO groups, the importance of identifying and developing responsive and effective leadership from the community cannot be understated. In CO, “the goal of encouraging people to feel and be more powerful is typically as important as achieving substantive change. Hence, leadership development is critical. … Every member is encouraged to take leadership roles. Members and leaders make all organizational decisions, from bylaws to slogans. Members raise and select organizational issues
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One Group’s View of Base-Building
The French American Charitable Trust (FACT), a national, family foundation based in San Francisco, is among those funders that have prioritized base-building organizations in their grantmaking. In its first five-year report issued in April 2000, the foundation stated: “The belief that basebuilding organizations are critical to achieving lasting social change is central to everything we do. We are convinced that societal changes come about most often through the involvement, instigation, and commitment of many people. Furthermore, history has shown us that it requires vigilance on the part of the public to implement and maintain good social policy. We think that base-building organizations are a key mechanism for educating and involving the public in decision-making processes and for maintaining people’s involvement over the years.”28
based on the self-interests of the group, and broad agreement among members is necessary before the organization will pursue an issue. Most grassroots organizations work on many issues at once. Decisions regarding strategy, tactics, and targets are made by leaders and members, using staff consultation. … Pressure activities are implemented and evaluated by members. Leaders speak to the press and negotiate with targets.”29
CASE STUDY #2: LYNDALE NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION
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CO at Work: How a Minneapolis group builds upon relationships among neighbors, block by block. The Lyndale Neighborhood Association (LNA) has received national attention for its work in Minneapolis, making the transition from a crime-infested, transient community to one of the most diverse and vibrant neighborhoods in the city. The area’s recent renaissance — new housing, revitalized retail areas, and community-based services for families and children — is due in no small part to the work of hundreds of residents organized by LNA. LNA takes pride in its reputation as an organization that empowers the community. Based on the philosophy, “We’re not building a community organization, we’re building a community,” staff was cut dramatically several years ago, and the organization now depends on the talents and abilities of residents to define its goals, create projects and implement solutions to neighborhood challenges. Hundreds of residents are involved in LNA’s work each month, and the organization focuses on building resident leaders. LNA supports with technical assistance and funding any project residents want to take on, providing an incentive for residents to become
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organizers and gather support for desired projects. This level of involvement holds true for virtually all of the group’s community initiatives. Even young people plan and implement programs to serve their needs. Through a decentralized network of block clubs — 48 of the neighborhood’s 52 blocks participate — LNA’s organizing approach emphasizes strengthening relationships among neighbors, finding common interests, and developing mutually supportive skills and needs, and then building on these relationships to shape how problems get solved. Residents who work with LNA choose to be involved in every aspect of the systems that provide them with services, both to avoid being relegated to “client” or “customer” status, and to ensure that the community controls how its needs are met and develops its own capacity to meet those needs.30
CASE STUDY
COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS: WHO ARE THEY?
The soul of organizing is people. An organizer might be paid or work as a volunteer. The group could start as part of a master plan hatched in a smoke filled room or out of a ‘spontaneous’ community reaction to a crisis like a toxic waste dump. They might base their work on house by house prayer groups or cells of clandestine conspirators. The ultimate goal could be the preservation of Hopi language and culture or the overthrow of the real estate tax based system for financing public education. Organizers can differ on strategy, tactics, even on what seem to be base values. However, all organizers believe in people, in the ability of regular folks to guide their lives, to speak for themselves, to learn the world and how to make it better.31
— Dave Beckwith and Randy Stoeker
Achieving the long-term goals and specific concrete objectives of CO in and for a community of any size is challenging work, to say the least. A CO organization never starts with a level playing field. To develop, mature and succeed over time, it must constantly fight uphill battles. There is no roadmap to accomplishment. Resources are often in short supply. Risks are high. Behind the success of any CO organization or effort are community organizers. Many have called organizers the “driving force” of CO,32 though CO’s principles require that they facilitate the people’s work, not lead it.
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Just what organizers do can sound like any standard job description — “administration, planning, policy decision-making, program and leadership development and action implementation, public relations activities, and service activities.”33 But CO work takes form within the dynamics of community and struggle, requiring organizers to have an extraordinary range of competencies. The organizer must thoroughly understand the characteristics and the power patterns of the community through extensive interviews and discussions with community members. The organizer is a listener. The organizer identifies and trains potential leaders. These potential leaders are not necessarily the titular heads of organizations. Through an extensive listening process issues or problems of concern to the people are identified. People must be encouraged to talk about their views of the community and it is important that they realize that the organizer does not come with a preconceived program. An organizer must also be able to agitate people to act. “Until the people recognize that it is they who must do something about their own problems, and that it is only THEY who can be trusted to do the right thing — and until they realize that only if they organize enough power in their community that something can be done about these things, nothing will get done.” 34
The National Organizers Alliance: An Organization for Community Organizers
Among a wide array of organizations that strengthen the CO field, the National Organizers Alliance (NOA) is the only one whose membership is primarily community organizers. Launched in 1992, NOA has more than 1,000 dues-paying members and a larger affiliated community of more than 5,000 persons involved in CO, representing over 2,000 organizations. NOA supports people of color becoming organizers and encourages people from diverse communities to enter the CO field. For more information on NOA, visit the NFG Web site at www.nfg.org.
Wage Scales for Community Organizers: One Perspective
As a committed CO funder, Regina McGraw, executive director of the Wieboldt Foundation, is keenly
aware of the extraordinary efforts put forward by many community organizers. For what they do and accomplish, they are often underpaid. McGraw recommends that funders examine grantee wage scales and benefits packages to see if they are appropriate to the level of skill, management responsibilities, interpersonal skills, and public presence that are needed for success. She believes that if nonprofits are to pay full benefits, funders must support the expenditure by giving operating support whenever possible.
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BACKGROUNDER # 2
The Roles and Responsibilities of Community Organizers
Organizers challenge people to act on behalf of their common interests. Organizers empower people to act by developing shared relationships, understandings, and tasks which enable them to gain new resources, new understanding of their interests, and new capacity to use these resources on behalf of their interests. Organizers work through “dialogues” in relationships, understanding and action carried out as campaigns. They identify, recruit and develop leadership, they build community among that leadership, they build power out of that community. Organizers develop new relationships out of old ones — sometimes by linking one person to another and sometimes by linking whole networks of people together. Organizers deepen understanding by creating opportunities for people to deliberate with one another about their circumstances, to reinterpret these circumstances in ways that open up new possibilities for action, and to develop strategies and tactics that make creative use of the resources and opportunities that their circumstances afford. Organizers motivate people to act by creating experiences to challenge those feelings which inhibit action, such as fear, apathy, self-doubt, inertia and isolation with those feelings that support action such as anger, hope, selfworth, urgency and a sense of community. … Organizers work through campaigns. Campaigns are very highly energized, intensely focused, concentrated streams of activity with specific goals and deadlines. People are recruited, battles fought and organizations built through campaigns. Campaigns polarize by bringing out conflicts ordinarily submerged in a way contrary to the interests of the organizing constituency. One critical dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance the work of campaigns with the ongoing work of organizational survival. Organizers build community by developing leadership. They focus on identifying leaders and enhancing their skills, values and commitments. They also focus on building strong communities: communities through which people can gain new understanding of their interests as well as power to act on them. Organizers work at constructing communities which are bounded yet inclusive, communal yet diverse, soladaristic yet tolerant. They work at developing a relationship between community and leadership based on mutual responsibility and accountability.35
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TYPES OF CO GROUPS AND THE WORK THEY DO
By one estimate, there are more than 6,000 community organizations in the U.S. using some form of CO to carry out their community-serving missions. Most have been formed in the past 25 years or so.36 A far smaller but rapidly growing number of groups, no more than several hundred, can be most accurately categorized as full-scale CO groups — groups of all sizes whose values, goals, accountability, governance, organizational development and operational strategies consistently reflect CO’s core principles, and who can readily be distinguished from other types of nonprofit organizations. There are also some two dozen or more intermediary groups at regional and national levels that play critical roles in training community organizers and community leaders, and provide technical assistance and other services to strengthen CO. Though community organizations with CO as their central strategy come in all sizes, shapes and locations, they share the elements listed below. • They enable grassroots people — not the government, business, academics, the media or anyone else — to set their own priorities. • They help their members and constituents to develop skills and know-how to act on those priorities. • They have an impact, changing public and private policies and priorities to become more responsive to the needs of the people closest to the problem.37 The most advanced and highly regarded of CO organizations today work on a range of issues, are staffed, intend to be around for the long term, and are invested in building the capacity of their constituencies — often of many races and/or cultures — to address increasingly more difficult, complex and/or recalcitrant issues. Many CO groups also seek to contribute to the growth of a broad-based movement toward their vision for a more humane and just society, and may seek to model that vision in their internal structure and operations. Changes sought by CO organizations often require them to pursue collaborative efforts with other CO organizations, as well as with other types of groups, in order to effectively address issues at jurisdictional levels beyond the current scope of any one of the CO organizations. Most receive assistance from intermediary organizations that provide training, advice and resources.
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Three Types of Groups. On the broadest level, CO organizations can be roughly categorized by where they most closely fit within three major approaches. (See Backgrounder #3 for examples of each approach.)
1. Direct or individual membership groups that are typically small and geographically-based efforts to organize individual low- and moderateincome people. The members may be broadly focused on improving their neighborhood or working on a specific issue like workers’ rights or environmental degradation. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) individual groups are among those that fit this category. 2. Issue-based coalitions that mobilize public interest groups, unions and other already established groups to affect a public policy or to address a common concern, such as a crisis in the public school system. The Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee and the Interfaith Coalition for Workers’ Rights are two such coalitions. 3. Institution-based organizing (or congregation-based or faith-based organizing) that is rooted in and brings together local religious (and most often other) institutions to work on behalf of a community. The IAF pioneered this approach with Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio, Texas.
None of the three CO approaches exists in “pure” form, nor are the approaches accompanied by hard and fast rules to which all CO organizations of a particular type subscribe. Many CO organizations employ approaches that are mixed “models” or hybrids. What is best for any given community can only be determined in the context of that situation. The CO field is quite dynamic: for CO groups, adjustments in organizational structure, tactics and strategies to meet changing societal conditions are more the rule than the exception.
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BACKGROUNDER # 3
Examples of the Different Types of CO Groups
Example: Direct or Individual Membership Groups In New York City, Oakland (California), St. Louis (Missouri), Denver (Colorado) and elsewhere ACORN has focused organizing campaigns on creating better schools. In the Rockaways section of Queens, ACORN first organized parents several years ago around the issue of a summer program that was slated for closing at one public school. The parents were successful, and this gave them confidence to tackle larger concerns about the school. Through a series of classes over a sixmonth period, they studied such issues as achievement tests, tracking, parent participation and teacher qualifications. They visited schools with innovative programs. They determined what kind of school they wanted for their children. Working with school officials, they created the Rockaway New School, a “mini-school within a school” for children from kindergarten through sixth grade. The school features hands-on and cooperative learning, multi-grade classrooms, collaboration between parents and teachers, and an exceptional level of parent involvement in both day-to-day classroom activities and the governance of the schools.38 Having built on this experience, New York ACORN runs high schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan and is organizing around issues such as attracting and keeping experienced teachers and smaller class sizes. Example: Issue-Based Coalition The Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee (CSM) brings together community, government, labor and business representatives to form “a grassroots organizing project for family-supporting jobs and a community voice in economic decisions.” CSM’s specific strategies integrate CO with coalition building and advocacy. In its jobs and welfare reform work, CSM created the Central City Workers Center, which has connected hundreds of low-income residents to family-supporting jobs — entrylevel positions in the Laborers Union that pay more than $12 an hour. The Center demonstrates that there is a viable alternative to low-wage, dead-end jobs that have too often been the outcomes of welfare reform efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The Center also serves as a means and a place for organizing residents into a membership-based union, deepening their understanding of community issues and developing their research, leadership and advocacy skills, so that they can take instrumental roles in developing and implementing CSM’s action strategies.39
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BACKGROUNDER # 3
Example: Institution-Based Organizing
(continued)
When a Levi-Strauss cut-and-sew factory on San Antonio’s South Side closed in 1990, coming on the heels of other plant closings and looming defense cutbacks, good-paying jobs were lost, many of them blue collar. Alternative jobs were in lowpaying service industries. Meanwhile, higher-paying jobs in the health industry and elsewhere were unfilled for lack of skilled workers. Two powerful San Antonio congregation-based organizations affiliated with IAF — Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) and The Metro Alliance — joined forces to find a solution. The result — after years of house meetings, research actions, dialogue, and debate with corporate and public officials, and other organizing activities — is Project QUEST (Quality Employment Through Skills Training). It involves collaborative relationships among IAF, the business community, employers of high-skilled workers, the city government, the regional PIC, the governor, the Texas Employment Commission, education and training institutions, and state social service agencies. Project QUEST established a new intermediary that recruits employers and secures job commitments; designs training programs; recruits, evaluates and refers trainees; counsels and supports trainees; and supports the trainees’ families. The Project heavily involves neighborhood residents in meeting its objectives. At its peak, before federal budget cutbacks several years ago, the Project had enrolled 1,200 people, most from IAF’s organized low-income neighborhoods. At the end of its second year of operation, 85 percent of enrollees had stayed in the program and, by early in 1996, almost 400 had found and been placed in jobs in which the average salary paid was $7.83 an hour. Project QUEST, funded by the Ford Foundation and other private and public sources, has been replicated at other IAF sites throughout Texas.40
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CO Organization Networks. CO today is primarily identified with a number of national CO networks, each with its own unique history and accomplishments. Core staff of the networks — mostly persons who are experienced community organizers — take a major hand in developing and supporting the networks’ affiliated local organizing groups. They provide a range of assistance to initiate, fortify and evaluate the work of the local groups, help to train and develop community organizers and local leaders, and connect the affiliates together for broader impact in addressing regional and national issues. A number of regional CO networks are taking similar roles with member groups in their areas. Finally, many CO organizations, while drawing on advice and help from a range of intermediaries, are operating independently in disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout the country. Most of the independent groups are small, and some will eventually affiliate with one of the networks. A few independent CO groups have become significant, long-term city- and community-wide forces for change in urban and rural areas. For more information on national and regional networks, see the section on How National and Regional Networks Provide Training, Technical Assistance and Other Support for CO on page 31.
Independent CO Organizations and Regional Networks
The work of the national networks has been the most visible sign of CO’s vitality — its importance, continuing growth and rapidly increasing impact over the past two decades. Those funders most familiar with CO have generally learned about the field through interactions with, and their funding of, one or more of the networks and/or network-affiliated groups. But the value of CO and its enormous potential can be fully understood and appreciated only when seen through a wider lens. There is a wide variety of independent local community organizations that are unaffiliated with the national networks. These groups are numerous and can be found in nearly every major city of the country. Many of these local independents are attracting funding from one or more NFG members. Among some of these independent organizations are: Hartford Areas Rally Together, Connecticut; Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Kentucky; People United for a Better Oakland, California; and Native Action, Montana. There are also several regional networks that provide local organizations with training, technical assistance and networking opportunities. Among these regional networks are: Western Organization of Resource Councils, Montana; Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, Washington; Grassroots Leadership Network, North Carolina.
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CASE STUDY #3: PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION (PICO)
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CO at Work: How a faith-based New Orleans group reaches out person-by-person to identify its priorities and implement change.
All Congregations Together (ACT) is one of the largest institution- or faith-based CO groups in the country. The citywide New Orleans group is a PICO affiliate. Through its membership of more than 60 congregations, ACT represents more than 150,000 city residents — youth, senior citizens and all ages in between; Black, White, Hispanic, Asian and more; from across the economic spectrum; from 13 different religious denominations. Here is how ACT describes its commitment, its constituency, its work and some of its results: ACT is “united in faith — faith that teaches us to reach out to our neighbors; faith that tells us that we have a responsibility to ease the suffering of our brothers and sisters and leave this world knowing that because of us, it is a better place than it was when we entered it — that we have indeed made a difference.” ACT does its primary work in one-on-one conversations41 — more than 10,000 over the past six years — with people in its congregations and surrounding communities. The issues that ACT prioritizes for its research and action strategies come from these conversations. In this way, ACT ensures that its CO is truly bottom-up, rather than top-down with issues imposed on the community. ACT has trained more than 1,000 leaders from the community and, with the spark and hard work of these leaders, has established itself as a highly effective, results-oriented grassroots organization. Some of ACT’s accomplishments include: • Securing public resources. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that ACT’s “public accountability sessions” with city leaders had produced “remarkable results. … City Hall attention to ACT concerns is a sign that the organization has made the transition from noisemaker to player in city politics.” The city increased funding for demolition of abandoned buildings in response to ACT and now has two of its 10 health inspectors responding to ACT complaints. • Establishing effective relationships. New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial keeps a copy of ACT’s nonpartisan platform for rebuilding the city on a wall in his office. Shortly after his election in 1994, Morial directed his top staff to go on retreat with ACT leaders to strengthen that relationship. Morial says, “Government can in no way do it alone, not without the help of the people most affected and leaders in the community willing to lend of themselves and their time. The formation of ACT is truly a godsend.” • Impacting a failing educational system. In 1998-99, ACT sought major reforms in the exceedingly low-performing Orleans Parish school system. ACT’s 10-issue platform was presented to the School Board in May 1998 at by far the best-attended meeting in the board’s history — over 1,000 residents were brought together by ACT. The platform is
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CASE STUDY
the basis for significant structural, policy and other reforms that now have the backing of the city’s business, political and university communities. Recently, the Director of the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation credited ACT with “making the reform movement happen and holding us accountable for results.” • Building clout on a broader scale to affect public policies. ACT is also working statewide with other groups in the PICO network to develop state support for after-school academic learning centers (several million dollars have already been committed by the state), steer the resources to the most needy schools in each community, measure and demonstrate the results in improved student performance, and seek increased resources to expand the number of centers so that as many under-performing students as possible can be served.42
HOW NATIONAL AND REGIONAL NETWORKS PROVIDE TRAINING, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE AND OTHER SUPPORT FOR CO
National and regional organizing networks train organizers and leaders, support organizational development, give programmatic and strategic guidance, mentor and evaluate organizers, assist in fundraising, and promote and facilitate cross-training and learning among affiliates. The relationship between the local affiliates and the networks is very tight, multi-dimensional, and absolutely essential to the effectiveness of CO strategies at neighborhood, community, regional and national levels. The networks and other intermediary organizations fall into four categories: • Regional centers that provide a wide range of services to a cross-section of groups in their areas, such as the Community Resource Center in Denver, Colorado and the Western States Center in Portland, Oregon; • Training groups building their own networks, such as PICO, IAF, DART (Direct Action Research and Training), and Gamaliel Foundation; • Constituency-focused intermediaries providing training and technical assistance for groups that involve and represent those constituencies, such as The Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland, California, which works with communities of color; and the Center for Community Change, in Washington, D.C., which works with low-income communities; and • Intermediaries concerned with building a formidable network and developing other organizations in the field by integrating them into network training events and through consultative assistance, such as The Midwest Academy in Chicago, ACORN’s Social Justice Institute, and the Western Organization of Resource Councils, in Montana.43
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CASE STUDY #4: DEVELOPING A FAITH-BASED CO ORGANIZATION
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CO at Work: Lessons from The Gamaliel Foundation on How to Build a Faith-Based CO Group.
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Faith-based CO organizations are most often developed in local communities by one of the national CO networks, though some local groups have emerged on their own. A few of the latter remain independent of networks, while most have sought and obtained affiliate or membership status with one of the networks. Each network follows a similar process in developing local faith-based organizations and in according them affiliate status. The Gamaliel Foundation’s process, which has been used in the development of some 40 affiliates and sponsoring committees across the country, normally takes a year or more to complete. It builds local commitment to and “ownership” of the organization from the very beginning. The steps that groups must follow in Gamaliel’s process are listed below. • Recruit a minimum of 20 congregations (generally emphasizing those serving low-income communities and communities of color), form a multiracial and ecumenical sponsoring committee, and raise $100,000. • Hire in concert with Gamaliel a professional organizer to guide its work. • Assure that the organizer meets with every pastor and 10 laypersons from each congregation to learn about each congregation and to identify potential leaders. • Bring three to five leaders from each congregation to a weekend retreat to study the basic concepts of organizing. • Have each core leader who goes through the retreat recruit another 15 – 100 leaders in his or her congregation. • Have this expanded team of 300 – 800 leaders go through four hours of training in conducting “one-on-one” interviews with congregation members. • Over a six-week period, visit anywhere from 150 – 1,500 people within each congregation. • Hold a large convention44 in which participants choose four top priority issues and commit themselves to working on one of them. • Have up to 300 leaders go through another four-hour training, this time to learn how to conduct one-on-ones with public officials, professors, agency heads and business CEOs. • Assure that the leaders spend eight weeks conducting one-on-ones with public officials.
The Community Organizing Toolbox s Community Organizing: The Basics
After all of these steps are taken, the group holds its first public “action,” often with more than 1,000 people taking part. The group presents clear problems and solutions to politicians, agency heads and corporate leaders. The goal of the “action” is to win allies and gain recognition for the group.45
CASE STUDY
Other organizations play significant roles at the national level in assisting CO organizations. Among them: • The Grassroots Policy Project, Washington, D.C. – trains environmental and economic justice groups for increased participation in the political process; • The National Center for Schools and Communities, New York City – research, training and other assistance to catalyze and strengthen school reform and community-building CO groups and strategies; • Enlace, Portland, Oregon – strengthening and expanding the base for low-wage worker organizing; • The Progressive Technology Project, Washington, D.C. – making effective use of computer technology, the Internet, and other rapidly evolving technologies and communications vehicles for organizing and change; and • The Grass Roots Innovative Policy Program, Roanoke, Virginia – builds greater capacity and linkages for policy impact by CO groups.
CO ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Here is a brief sampling of results produced by CO groups over the past few years, organized by issue area. More examples are cited throughout the Toolbox text. Community Reinvestment. The efforts of CO groups, including National Peoples Action and the National Training and Information Center, have translated into more than $1 trillion in loans for qualified homebuyers, affordable housing developers and business entrepreneurs in low-income communities. Their years of work contributed heavily first to enactment of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, followed by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977. Since then, CO groups have worked to ensure effective implementation of the Act, and to translate lending commitments into loans for qualified homebuyers and business entrepreneurs in low-income communities. They have also worked with national organizations like the National Community Reinvestment Coalition to protect it from being
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weakened and possibly eradicated by various congressional efforts. A few achievements are listed here. • Negotiated landmark agreements with banks in 16 cities, making more than $1 billion available for loans in low-income neighborhoods. Pioneered a comprehensive mortgage-counseling program that has put more than 21,000 families into their own homes. (ACORN) • Won more than $100 million in CRA agreements with banks in Dade, Pinellas and Palm Beach counties by DART organizations in Florida. (Direct Action Research and Training) • Sought and obtained loan commitments of $469.3 million for mortgages, community development corporations, and small businesses in underserved Milwaukee neighborhoods. (Milwaukee Interfaith Congregations Allied for Hope, a Gamaliel Foundation affiliate) • Negotiated a $337 million community reinvestment agreement from a legal challenge of the First Union/CoreStates bank merger, including keeping branches open in low-income neighborhoods. (East Philadelphia Organizing Project)
Why Some CO Groups Fail
Of course, some CO groups fail. Because CO prioritizes the processes of democratic practice and leadership development, critics and skeptics may (and do) argue that CO groups are “hung up on process at the expense of product,” or “focus too narrowly on what is in the self-interest of members ignoring big picture concerns.” Of course, some CO groups and efforts are clearly marginal and may indeed be “guilty as charged.” Emerging CO groups, with resources and support in short supply or caught up in internal struggles,
Education and Youth Development. Over the past decade, more CO groups have begun to focus on school and educational inequities, responding to parental and community concerns about substandard education provided to most low-income children and children of color. The groups are finding innovative ways to transform the culture and operations of schools, leading to enhanced school and student performance. Some CO groups have found effective ways to involve young people, helping them to influence school issues. A few achievements are listed here. • Developed a statewide network of 139 “alliance” schools beginning in 1991, which work to enhance
at times fail to mature and progress. Some older CO groups fail to self-renew, keep pace with changing needs, constituencies and conditions, or raise their sights as high as they might. But on the whole, even the least promising or successful CO groups have made some impact on their community.
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The Community Organizing Toolbox s Community Organizing: The Basics
the academic achievement of low-income students. Worked with the state education commissioner to convince the legislature to provide $2 million in new funds for low-performing schools in 1993, increased to $5 million in 1995. Trained hundreds of teachers and principals in working with the community to turn around low-performing schools. Significantly enhanced school and student performance in schools where CO has worked to forge new, collaborative relationships among principals, teachers, parents, community residents and community leaders. (Texas IAF) • Placed the largest ($9.2 billion) school facilities bond in U.S. history on the state ballot to raise funds for much-needed school repair and construction, in addition to a state law dedicating $50 million for after-school programs. (PICO California Project) • Organized young people who spearheaded the Kids First! Coalition that won the passage of a groundbreaking city ballot initiative setting aside $72 million over 12 years for youth development programs. (People United for a Better Oakland, Oakland, California) • Took the lead in educating constituents and organizing statewide advocacy efforts that led to enactment of the groundbreaking Mississippi Adequate Education Program, appropriating $650 million over five years to improve the quality of public education in the state. (Southern Echo) Jobs and Living Wages. Poverty has become more concentrated and entrenched in distressed inner-city and rural communities nationwide. Broader economic and public policy trends have undermined wages for the majority of families, with real family incomes falling for those in the bottom three-fifths of the income distribution. CO has addressed poverty conditions and wage erosion through a variety of living wage and other campaigns. Examples are listed below. • Secured passage of landmark Worker Retention and Living Wage Ordinances in Los Angeles in 1995 and 1997, and amendments strengthening these ordinances in 1998 and 1999. The Living Wage ordinance, paying (in 1999) $7.25 an hour with health benefits or $8.50 without, will cover 15,000 workers by 2002, the most extensive coverage in the country. (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy) • Obtained legislation requiring the city of Milwaukee to guarantee that unemployed innercity residents comprise 14 percent — later increased to 21 percent — of the workers on any city project. (Milwaukee Interfaith Congregations Allied for Hope) • Fostered employee buyouts of three companies, saving 3,100 jobs and keeping $200 million in income in New England’s Naugatuck Valley. (Naugatuck Valley Project)
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• Won passage of a state law in South Carolina that provides anti-firing protection to more than 1.5 million workers who are covered under the state workers’ compensation system. Closed a loophole in the law that had allowed employers to “opt” out of the system and provide inferior benefits to injured workers. More than 800 companies that had dropped out have had to resume participation in the workers’ compensation insurance system. (Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment) • Secured funding to open a dozen “one-stop centers” where AFDC/TANF recipients and the working poor can obtain child care, soft skills job training, access to health care, and micro-lending services. Won public funding, including first-time federal, county and city funds, for developing coop businesses owned and managed by poor people, and started more than a dozen cooperatives employing more than 100 people from low-income urban and rural neighborhoods. (Sacramento Valley Organizing Community, Sacramento, CA)
C
ASE
TU
Y
CASE STUDY #5: AN EMERGING PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN LABOR AND CO
CO at Work: How CO groups play a role in the living wage movement.
There has been a recent upsurge in working relationships between some unions and labor leaders, and some CO groups and networks. The work of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) in Baltimore, leading to the nation’s first living-wage ordinance, was accomplished in partnership with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). ACORN has been forging alliances with local labor federations, internationals of unions and locals in some cities for a number of years. IAF and the Gamaliel Foundation are working with public-sector unions to challenge efforts that seek to discredit public services and to increase the quality of public agencies. Independent CO groups are also working closely with some union locals. Leaders of the AFL-CIO and a number of its affiliated unions are using community organizers as consultants and trainers in their work to organize low-wage workers.46 No one can forecast how the CO-labor partnership will evolve. It may be possible to overcome the many challenges to forging common agreements and cooperative action necessary to move forward on a large scale. Clearly, some results to date are quite significant and have captured public and media attention for CO strategies. Here is one recent example as reported in The Los Angeles Times: In Los Angeles and elsewhere, a small but increasing number of employers who do business with the government are suddenly finding themselves required by local ordinances to grant big raises and benefits to their low-wage workers. Forty cities and counties in 17 states, particularly those with large constituencies of low-wage workers have enacted such wage laws since the movement began five years ago.
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CASE STUDY
D
S
As one follows another, lately at the rate of a new ordinance a month, the movement has begun to broaden from a simple emphasis on higher wages into a wide range of requirements involving health insurance, vacations, sick pay, job security, and incentives to unionize. “You have to look at the living wage movement in the context of the utter failure of federal labor law, now so stacked against workers,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, director of the Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition. She cited what she said was Washington’s failure to raise the national minimum wage to keep pace with the needs of the working poor or to strengthen labor’s bargaining power. Wage ordinances have become a goal of such national groups as the Industrial Areas Foundation and ACORN that seek to bring community groups together in social action campaigns. And with increasing frequency, the ordinances are becoming big issues in local politics. The first such ordinance was passed in December 1994, largely through the efforts of a community organization called BUILD. Last November, BUILD got thousands of residents of poor neighborhoods to the polls. Most voted for the re-election of Gov. Parris N. Glendening of Maryland, who is increasingly using the city’s ordinance as a model for contracts that the state makes with private companies. Here in Los Angeles, Mayor Richard J. Riordan tried to block the measure, but his veto was overridden by the City Council. Mayor Riordan said, however, that he agreed with supporters of the wage ordinance that income inequality had increased in part because of the decline in union bargaining power. Several ordinances try to reverse that trend through an “opt out” loophole that lets companies partly off the hook if they agree to let their workers organize — a central goal of Ms. Janis-Aparicio’s coalition. “Whenever you rely on legislation solely, the gains can be lost,” she said, noting that the Los Angeles City Council’s pro-labor bent could disappear in a future election. “So we need to build union agreements that have community support and will last.” While running a refugee center here, Ms. Janis-Aparicio, 39, was recruited into her present line of work in 1993 by Miguel Contreras, now the powerful secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Mr. Contreras, who had worked with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, was mindful of the public support — the consumer grape boycott — that had brought such success to the farm workers. So he asked Ms. Janis-Aparicio to set up a nonprofit organization that could foster similar community support for labor. She founded the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), which operates with a $1 million annual budget and 18 salaried staff members. The wage issue soon became the central cause. “The question of job inequities in the public sector, if we address it as a union, people say we are self-serving,” Mr. Contreras said. “But if it has the cloak of religious leaders and community activists, then it becomes a community issue.”47 For a listing of labor and community collaborations see The New World Foundation’s Phoenix Fund web site at www.phoenixfund.org.
CASE STUDY
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Environmental Quality and Environmental Justice. When the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a study of eight southern states to determine the correlation between the location of hazardous waste landfills and the racial and economic status of near-by communities, the results showed what low-income constituencies already knew — that race and economic status were major determinants in the siting of such facilities. The GAO study found that three out of every five African Americans and Latinos live in a community that houses unregulated toxic waste sites. These sites exist largely because decision-makers found and expected no resistance from community residents or leaders. CO groups have taken the lead to address this and related issues in what has come to be known as the environmental justice movement. Below are some examples of what the movement has accomplished. • Forced companies to clean up, move or cancel plans for toxic chemical plants, dumps, discharges or waste incinerators in Memphis, Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Des Moines, New Orleans, Dallas, Minneapolis, Jacksonville, St. Paul, Chicago and St. Louis. (ACORN) • Overcame long odds to block a proposed mountaintop removal permit on Big Black Mountain, Kentucky’s highest point and home to at least 50 plants and animals found nowhere else in the state. (Mountaintop removal is strip mining; the surface of the mountain is literally blown up and destroyed. Homes, personal property and the environment are damaged.) Negotiated an agreement with nine coal companies assuring no future mountaintop mining. (Kentuckians for the Commonwealth) • Ended the San Diego Port District’s use of methyl bromide, a toxic pesticide that had been causing widespread health problems in Barrio Logan, a poor neighborhood situated near the Port. The Port is one of the largest and most heavily used in the country. As a result of this work, became the only local group to participate with national and international non-governmental organizations during discussions of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty regarding the phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals that include methyl bromide. (Environmental Health Coalition) Democratic Participation. Below are some examples of how the CO movement has improved democratic participation. • Secured passage of the National Voter Registration Act (“motor voter”) by the Mississippi legislature, blocked three times in attempts to impede increased voting turnout of African Americans. Prevented onerous voter identification requirements from being attached to the legislation. The Act was vetoed by the governor in 1998, but the efforts have paid off in major changes in the legislative process that have benefited African Americans. As reported in the local press, efforts to diminish the impact of voting by African Americans have “evaporated.” (Southern Echo)
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• Registered more than 500,000 new voters since 1980. Struck down barriers to voter registration in Bridgeport, Pine Bluff, Little Rock, Atlanta, Grand Rapids and Pittsburgh. (ACORN) Health. Below are some examples of how the CO movement has addressed health needs. • Extended Medicaid coverage to an additional 42,000 North Carolinians. Led lobbying campaign for a $10 million program to reduce infant mortality rate, with money secured for maternity and infant care, pap smears and breast cancer screenings. Forced state government to open a health department serving poor residents of Edgecomb County. (North Carolina Fair Share) • Worked with coalition partners to get the Texas state legislature to approve a first-time-ever package of legislation on indigent health care, resulting in the provision of $70 million in new funds to provide health services in poor, underserved communities. (Texas IAF) • Won expanded in-home care services to more than 1,200 people with disabilities; the restructuring of Idaho’s medical indigence program, resulting in $6 million in new Medicaid services; and concessions by the Board of Medicine to make significant expansions in the scope and practice of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. (Idaho Community Action Network) Crime and Safety. Below are some examples of how CO has addressed crime and safety issues. • Forced police and city officials to respond more effectively to rapes in low-income neighborhoods and to establish rape-prevention programs in St. Louis, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans and Des Moines. Won new programs to fight drugs in New Orleans, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Boston and Detroit. (ACORN) • Initiated local organizing campaigns that resulted in 15 new school-based anti-drug and gang prevention projects and the implementation of gang prevention curricula in six junior high and elementary schools. (People Acting in Community Together, San Jose, California, an affiliate of PICO) • Secured numerous agreements with police departments to fight crime and drugs. More police were stationed in crime-ridden areas, and hot spot campaigns allowed neighborhood residents to report crimes anonymously. (Direct Action Research and Training in Florida) City Services. Below are some examples of how CO has improved city services. • Obtained more than $13 million between 1991 and 1996 for youth and neighborhood programs, including $2 million for a new youth drug treatment facility and $6 million in redevelopment funds. (People Acting in Community Together)
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• Secured a steady, annual funding source for children’s services in the San Francisco city budget, with $160 million to be provided for children’s programs between 1993 and 2003. (Coleman Advocates for Youth, San Francisco) Corporate Social Responsibility. Below is an example of how CO has played a role in corporate social responsibility. • Persuaded business leaders to launch a $25 million scholarship program to assist Baltimore’s public school graduates, primarily low-income students. Secured the agreement of the business community to guarantee three job interviews to every high school graduate with a 95 percent attendance record. (BUILD, an IAF affiliate) Institutional Racism. Below is an example of how CO has addressed institutional racism. • Persuaded the Office of Civil Rights of the U. S. Department of Education to address extreme racial disparities encountered by African American youth in Darlington County, South Carolina. The county school system has been compelled to enter into a legal agreement to address the disparities. (Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment)
THE PROMISE OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
CO’s Promise: “Liberty, Equality and Community”
The community organizing movement is a largely American phenomenon. It is based deeply in our democratic values. It is, in the view of its participants and practitioners, the members, leaders and organizers of mass organizations, the major hope for the building of democracy in our country. It comes directly to grips with the two central problems of our time: economic and social inequality on the one hand and the alienation of the people from civic life on the other. It is growing both numerically and in its self-confidence. If it continues and avoids some of the mistakes of the past it offers the promise of becoming a major new force in American public life. The likelihood of this happening is increased both by the continuing economic and spiritual crisis of our times and by the growing consciousness, confidence and competence of the organizers and organizations who now are part of the movement. The movement is ‘outside the system’ in the sense that it is creating new forms of participation and power in public life. It is ‘inside the
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The Community Organizing Toolbox s Community Organizing: The Basics
system’ in the sense that it is firmly rooted in the American democratic tradition and uses the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of the people as the basis for its organizing work. Those of us who are in the movement imagine ourselves to be in the great tradition of American democracy. Our hopes and dreams are based on our confidence in the people as a whole to govern themselves. We have seen nothing in past or present experiences to persuade us that any other approach will bring us closer to liberty, equality and community.48
— Mike Miller, Organize Training Center
CO is a serious and effective but imperfect strategy. Those involved in the field measure their chances for future success on the basis of what they have experienced — learning from trial and error, taking it step-by-step, building for the long term. CO’s work is in distressed communities and with disenfranchised constituents — a “school of hard knocks” if there ever was one. With resources in short supply and no magic bullets to be found, CO’s practitioners can have few false illusions. You do it or you don’t, and you try again until you’ve succeeded. CO groups have made enormous progress against long odds in a range of areas. The progress is measured in people with power capable of shaping their futures and in tangible, meaningful policy and program benefits. This progress is likely to continue and spread if for no other reason than the determination, grit and intelligence of those within CO who are dedicated to its success. And the vision to which they are dedicated is America as it was meant to be.
7
Robert C. Linthicum, Empowering the Poor: Community Organizing among the city’s “rag, tag and bobtail,” Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1991, p. 31. Miller, Organize Training Center, as quoted in Sally Covington and Larry Parachini, Foundations in the Newt Era, Washington, DC: The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 1995. term “values-based” refers to values that form the basis of CO theory and practice. For most community organizers and CO groups, the values include: community, solidarity, equality, freedom, justice, the dignity of the individual, respect for differences, civility, and political democracy. Kahn, Organizing: A Guide for Grassroots Leaders, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982, p. 1. Beckwith and Randy Stoecker, Community Organizing: Soul and Substance, forthcoming.
8 Mike
9 The
10 Si
11 Dave 12 Nina
Wallerstein, “Powerlessness, Empowerment, and Health: Implications for Health Promotion Programs,” American Journal of Health Promotion, 1992, (6): 197 – 205.
13 Seth 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Hollis
Borgos and Scott Douglas, “Community Organizing and Civic Renewal: A View from the South,” Social Policy, Winter, 1996.
Watkins, Southern Echo. and Douglas, Community Organizing and Civic Renewal.
17 Borgos 18 Gary
Delgado, From the Ground Up: Problems and Prospects for Community Organizing, prepared for the Ford Foundation, Oakland, CA: Applied Research Center, February 1993, p. 5.
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19 The
term “CO field” is not one that all or many involved in CO utilize. In fact, no single term that captures CO in all its varieties is in common use among CO practitioners. Some prefer the term “craft,” while others use “profession.” Both of these terms refer mostly to the roles of community organizers.
20 Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, “Introduction,” Community Organization for Social Change, ed. Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. xi-xviii. Fisher and Romanofsky’s historical overview was summarized in Michael R. Williams, Neighborhood Organizations: Seeds of a New Urban Life, from which this section is taken.
these four periods of social reform CO history, counter-productive local organizing also flared periodically with equal intensity. For example, fierce anti-black “Neighborhood Improvement Associations” formed in Detroit after 1915, as blacks poured into the city from the South to work in the auto plants. These neighborhood organizations had only one purpose: to maintain their all-white areas against black encroachment. And, in another of dozens of examples that might be cited, the Citizens Council in New Orleans during the late 1950s opposed school integration orders, organizing citywide and targeting specific neighborhood schools. See B.J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972, pp. 3 –22, and, Neil McMillen, “The Citizens Council in New Orleans: Organized Resistance to Social Change in a Deep South City,” in Fisher and Romanofsky, pp. 157 – 185.
22 Drawn 23 Ibid. 24Mike 25 The
21 During
from: Ann Bastian, Why Do We Need Strategic Practice?, New World Foundation, undated.
Miller, internal memorandum discussing forthcoming book, Organize! Training Center, May 2000.
Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky & His Legacy, produced by Bob Hercules and Bruce Orenstein for the Media Process Group, Chicago, IL, 1998.
26 Mike
Miller, memorandum prepared for NFG to assist in development of the CO Toolbox, May 2000.
Young, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as quoted in Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995, p. 265.
28 FACT’s
27 Andrew
Five Year Report, 1995 - 1999, SF, Fact Services Company, Inc., 2000, p. 8. B. Mondros and Scott M. Wilson, Organizing for Power and Empowerment, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Neighborhood Association,” Shelterforce, Orange, NJ, September/October, 1998, p. 32. Wilson, Organizing for Power and Empowerment, p. 12. The authors cite many sources. and Wilson, Organizing for Power and Empowerment, p. 27.
29 Jacqueline 30 “Lyndale 31 Dave
Beckwith and Randy Stoecker, Community Organizing: Soul and Substance, forthcoming.
32 Mondros 33 Mondros 34 Carl
Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship: A Foundations Experience, Santa Cruz: Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation, Inc., 1980, p. Ganz, unpublished paper, 1995. From the Ground Up, p. 27.
240.
35 Marshall 36 Delgado, 37 Jim 38 As
Castelli and John D. McCarthy, Power Organizing: How to Build Community and Reinvigorate Democracy, forthcoming, p. 29.
presented in Charles Bruner and Larry Parachini, Building Community: Exploring New Relationships Across Service Systems Reform, Community Organizing, and Community Economic Development, Washington, DC: Together We Can, 1997, p. 25.
39 Drawn from Larry Parachini, with Andrew Mott, Strengthening Community Voices in Policy Reform: Community-Based Monitoring, Learning and Action Strategies for an Era of Devolution and Change, Washington, DC: Center for Community Change, July 1997, p. 37. 40 Bruner and Parachini, Building Community…, p. 25. Project Quest’s results were reported in Dennis Shirley, Community Organizing for Urban School Reform, Austin, TX, University of Texas Press, 1997, p. 198. 41 The
“one-on-one” interview is a basic technique used in CO to build relationships of value for the organizing process. Organizers and leaders are given training in how to conduct these interviews.
42 This example has been compiled and edited from three sources. They are, Building Civic Capacity through Faith-Based Community Organizing, prepared by ACT and presented to school reform activists and foundation representatives convened at the Open Society Institute, NYC, in May 1999; Castelli and McCarthy, Power Organizing: How to Build Community and Reinvigorate Democracy; and Site Visit Report – ACT, prepared by Larry Parachini for the National Center for Schools and Communities, NYC, May 1999. 43 Delgado, 44 Such
From the Ground Up… Foundation, as quoted in Castelli and McCarthy, Power Organizing…, p. 39. from: Louis Uchitelle, “Minimum Wages, City by City,” The Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1999.
founding conventions of Gamaliel’s affiliates have attracted as many as 1,000 participants. Miller, memorandum prepared for NFG, May 2000. Miller, The Ideology of the Community Organizing Movement, Organize Training Center, 1979.
45 Gamaliel 46 Mike
47 Excerpted 48 Mike
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